Authorize senders with SPF

About SPF records

We recommend that you create a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record for your domain. An SPF record is a type of Domain Name Service (DNS) record that identifies which mail servers are permitted to send email on behalf of your domain.

The purpose of an SPF record is to prevent spammers from sending messages with forged From addresses at your domain. Recipients can refer to the SPF record to determine whether a message purporting to be from your domain comes from an authorized mail server.

For example, suppose that your domain example.com uses Gmail. You create an SPF record that identifies the Google Apps mail servers as the authorized mail servers for your domain. When a recipient's mail server receives a message from user@example.com, it can check the SPF record for example.com to determine whether it is a valid message. If the message comes from a server other than the Google Apps mail servers listed in the SPF record, the recipient's mail server can reject it as spam.

If your domain does not have an SPF record, some recipient domains may reject messages from your users because they cannot validate that the messages come from an authorized mail server.

If you've already set the SPF record for your domain, it means that you have set Google's servers in the SPF records.

SPF records for outbound gateway

If you decide to enable the email gateway feature, you will need to make sure both Google server's and the outbound gateway SMTP server address is included in the SPF record.

Note: If you purchased your domain from one of our registration partners while signing up for Google Apps, Google does not publish SPF records for your domain.

Note: If you have an existing SPF record, you can update it to authorize an additional mail server. Be careful not to create multiple SPF records - only update the existing record. Multiple SPF records are not recommended and will cause authorization problems. See Add SPF records for more information.

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